Names, brands, writing, and the language of commerce.

February 27, 2013

Qookies are gluten-free cookies made by TruRoots, “inspired by tradition and using recipes perfected by artisanal bakers.” The ingredients list does mention quinoa, so maybe that explains the Q. But why not Quookies?

True, the U-less spelling lends itself to a kooky pairing of Qookies and Qream.

It’s not perfume. It’s liqueur.

For the full scoop on Qream – that’s “Qream with a Q,” “a truly elegant experience for the modern day queen and her court of friends” that’s “created by” rapper/producer/fashion designer Pharrell Williams – get yourself over to The Hairpin. Also check out this story about the $5 million Qream lawsuit.

February 07, 2011

Will brand names that begin with “Q” be the hot trend of 2011? That’s what I propose in my new column for Visual Thesaurus, “Queuing Up.” The full text—which includes many examples to support my case—is available to subscribers only (just $19.95 a year!). Here’s a taste:

Brand names that start with Q aren’t new, of course: think of Quaker (oil or oats), Q-tips (originally called Baby Gays; now there was a smart change!), and Quonset. (Quonset huts have been around since World War II; the US trademark for “Quonset” was granted in 1972.) The contemporary craze for Q-names, however, may have gotten its start in 1989 with the naming of the Infiniti Q45 car model. There had been many alphanumeric car-model names before then, but none using Q; reportedly, Infiniti’s parent company, Nissan, paid a naming consultant $75,000* to suggest “Q” and “J”—which the consultant called “utterly unused letters”—for model names. That’s $37,500 per letter, a record sum that may never be surpassed. And the idea wasn’t even original: The “Q” probably came from “Q-car,” a British term for a “sleeper,” a vehicle that disguises a high-performance engine behind an unassuming exterior.

October 28, 2010

There are Qdoba Mexican Grills in Baton Rouge, Bryn Mawr, Boston, and Bloomington, but there’s not a single one in coastal California north of Los Angeles County, which may explain why I first encountered the restaurant, and the name, away from home—in Portland, Oregon, to be precise.

The website offers no clues. So I ran through a list of possibilities:

1. Something to do with Córdoba, the city in Spain. Which might make sense if this were a chain of Spanish restaurants.

2. Barbeque (’que) meets (misspelled) adobe!

3. It’s inspired by adobo, a peppery marinade or seasoning mix used in the Southwest United States—or a cooking process popular in the Philippines. Only with a feminine ending. And a Q because . . . ¿quién sabe?

4. It means nothing. Qdoba.com happened to be available when the chain launched its website.

5. Your suggestion here.

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UPDATE: On Twitter, nancycc (of the excellent Nancy’s Baby Names blog) forwarded an article published in QSR magazine about Qdoba, which was originally called Z-Teca. The name change was effected by Terry Heckler of Heckler & Associates, a Seattle ad agency; according to the article, Heckler is also responsible for naming Starbucks (in 1971) and the Panera Bread chain (originally the St. Louis Bread Company). According to Heckler, Qdoba means nothing . . . and that’s its virtue. (BTW, QSR stands for quick-serve restaurant, the industry term for fast food.)

October 05, 2010

1. Is it my dirty mind or Barnes & Noble’s? Last year they launched the Nook. This week it’s the PubIt! publishing platform. There’s something about the shape of that T… (And don't get me started on the exclamation mark.)

3. Google’s new link shortener, goo.gl, is now public. One of its advantages: it will display a list of links you shortened in the past. Wondering what .gl stands for? It’s the Greenland country code. (More about domain hacks here.)

September 02, 2010

Who doesn’t love Q? Designers are drawn to that sinuous little tongue. Elitists like to drop qua and qui vive into their discourse. Journalists depend on Qs (and, of course, As) for their livelihood. Q stands for quality and quantity, quiz and quintessence, quarter and quip.

Q is the letter of distinction in many great brand names, too, from Quaker to Quonset to Q-Tip. I myself have bestowed Q-names—one a real word, one coined—on a couple of companies.

But it’s easy to overdo Q—to torture that poor letter into positions it was never meant to assume.

It’s Sony’s on-demand music and video platform, which launched in February of this year—note the misspelling in the Engadget URL—and which by the end of the year will include a cloud-based music service similar to iTunes. Qriocity is pronounced “curiosity,” according to Fast Company, which adds, parenthetically, “Who knew?”

Who indeed? My first hesitant guess had been closer to “kreeocity.” Frankly, any name that looks that difficult doesn’t bode well for the service or product under the hood.

(To further confuse matters, there’s a Qriosity.com, unrelated to Sony, “where people find videos, pictures and news on the hottest topics.” It hasn’t been updated in almost a year, so maybe it’s on its way out.)

This company (invariably spelled in ALL CAPS on the website) makes scientific instruments for sampling and testing. Founded in Germany in 1984, it has more than 35 offices around the world. But you have to get more than a minute into a corporate video before you hear “Qiagen” pronounced.

Want to hazard a guess?

Nope, it isn’t KEE-a-gen or (following my hunch about a possible Chinese etymology) CHEE-a-gen. It’s KY-a-gen. The first syllable rhymes with “sky” or “the sweetheart of Sigma Chi.”

I haven’t found a story that explains the origin of this puzzling name.

Here’s the funny part: I learned about Qiagen from a client of mine; his company is in a related field and does business with Qiagen. And yet he stumbled over both the pronunciation and the spelling of the name. (“Uh … Kwee-a-gen?”) He did know that Qiagen has a consistent nomenclature; its products include QIAcube, QIAsymphony, and QIAlab. That’s good branding. But the name itself is more confusing than it needs to be.

Moral: Make sure your Q provides clear cues about pronunciation. Is it an independent phoneme (“cue”)? Then help your audience with typography (e.g., QLogic) or punctuation (Q-layer). Is it substituting for /K/? Then make the association transparent by inserting it into familiar words (e.g., Qlock or Qloud).

But please, please, don’t make native English speakers and readers feel as though we’ve stumbled upon the lost language of the Qckoos.